University Relations

Laptop Theft

To the student community:

I am writing to advise that a university laptop computer containing student information was stolen Tuesday night from a locked car belonging to a UCCS staff member. The thief gained access by smashing the car’s window when the car was parked off campus.

The laptop contained already published directory information -- names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses -- and other admissions-related information for about 20,000 current and past UCCS students. No sensitive personal or financial information such as Social Security or credit card numbers was involved.

UCCS takes seriously its responsibility to secure information with which the university is entrusted and regrets this loss of data. Current students are being notified of the incident by e-mail and the university is also working with departments to encrypt all personally identifiable data on computers.